Victor Proshkin

Born: 1906, Oboyan (Kursk Province)

Died: 1983, Leningrad

Painter, graphic artist. Elder brother of Anatoly Proshkin, second husband of Victoria Belakovskaya, father of Vladimir Proshkin and artist Marianna Proshkina (born 1939). Born in the town of Oboyan in Kursk Province in the family of a merchant called Nikolai Proshkin (1906). Studied at Kharkiv Technical College of Folk Creativity (1921–23) and under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Grigory Bobrovsky, Alexander Savinov and Alexei Karev at the VKhUTEIN in Leningrad (1924–30). Member of October (1929–30) and the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (1930–32). Married Victoria Belakovskaya and worked with her at the Kharkiv Tractor Factory (1930–31). Founding member of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Artists (1932), executive secretary (1938–46). Lived in the former studio of Arkhip Kuinji on Tuchkov Embankment in Leningrad (from 1934). Worked at the Leningrad Port (1934) and Leningrad Air Squadron (1936), visited the Ukraine (1936). Head artist of Nevsky District of Leningrad (1934–38). Fought in the Winter War (1939–40) and painted portraits of partisans in Novgorod Region (1942–43). Taught at the Higher/Vera Mukhina School of Art and Industry in Leningrad (1948–81), head of the department of general painting (from 1957), professor of painting (from 1967). Suffered the loss of a hundred paintings in a fire at his studio in Leningrad (1976). Died in Leningrad and buried at the St Seraphim Cemetery (1983). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1930). Contributed to the Exhibition of Works by Artists Dispatched to Regions of Industrial and Collective-Farm Construction in Vsekokhudozhnik at 11 Kuznetsky Most in Moscow (1931), Leningrad in the Representations of Contemporary Artists at the Museum of Construction and Municipal Management (former Anichkov Palace) in Leningrad (1934), First Exhibition of Leningrad Artists at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1935), Autumn Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1936), Industry of Socialism at 79 Frunze Embankment in Moscow (1939), Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1939), Spring Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1943), Twenty-Five Years of the Red Army at the Sergei Kirov House of the Red Army in Leningrad (1943), Heroic Front and Rear at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (1943–44), Heroic Defence of Leningrad at Solyanoi Gordok in Leningrad (1944), All-Union Art Exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (1946), Exhibition of Landscapes and Portraits by Painters of Leningrad at the House of the Cinema in Leningrad (1946), Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1951), Autumn Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1956), Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists Dedicated to the Fortieth Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1957), Autumn Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1958), Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists of 1960 at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1960), Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1960), Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Russian Museum and Union of Artists in Leningrad (1961), Autumn Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1962), Leningrad: Zonal Exhibition at the Russian Museum in Leningrad (1964), Spring Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1965), Our Contemporary: Zonal Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Russian Museum and Union of Artists in Leningrad (1975), Fine Art of Leningrad at the Manège Central Exhibition Hall in Moscow (1976), Autumn Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Union of Artists in Leningrad (1978), Zonal Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists at the Manège Central Exhibition Hall in Leningrad (1980), Victoria Belakovskaya, Anatoly Proshkin, Victor Proshkin: Painting, Graphic Art at the Manège Central Exhibition Hall in St Petersburg (1993), Petersburg Dynasty at the Alexander Pushkin Museum in Moscow (2004), Petersburg Art of the Twentieth Century (Collection of Modern Art of the Manège Central Exhibition Hall) at the Manège Central Exhibition Hall in St Petersburg (2007), Painting of Soviet Artists and Members of Creative Unifications of the 1920s–30s (From Private Collections) at the Zheleznodorozhny (Obiralovka) Museum of Local Studies in Moscow Region (2012) and one-man shows at the Vera Mukhina School of Art and Industry in Leningrad (1976) and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (2006).